Eve Ruff is a Senior Consultant with Clere Consulting, a firm specializing in working with families presenting with a constellation of complex behavioral health and addiction issues requiring experienced and creative solutions. Eve consults with family members, evaluates collective needs, presents customized family workshops, and creates individualized intervention and treatment strategies and provider recommendations.
Today, she joins the show to discuss the work she does as a ‘family systems’ consultant, her struggles with addiction and substance abuse, and what brought her from New York City to Seattle.
Key Takeaways
01:22 – Eve Ruff joins the show to discuss the work she does as a ‘family systems’ consultant and what she observed throughout the global Covid pandemic
05:58 – Eve’s struggles with substance abuse and how it impacted her career trajectory
09:21 – Growing up in New York City with a very artistic and inventive father
13:49 – Eve’s Jewish heritage
15:58 – How Eve keeps herself healthy while working with families that are torn apart by addiction
17:47 – The Teflon Raincoat
19:01 – From New York City to Seattle, Washington
22:10 – Advice Eve gives to the struggling families she works with
23:15 – Dr. Flowers thanks Eve for joining today’s show and lets listeners know where they can connect with her
Resources Mentioned
JFlowers Health Institute – https://jflowershealth.com/
JFlowers Health Institute Contact – (713) 783-6655
Subscribe on your favorite player: https://understanding-the-human-condition.captivate.fm/listen
Eve’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/eve-ruff-942b1613b/
Eve’s Cell Phone – (206)-276-4472
**The views and opinions expressed by our guests are those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect those of J. Flowers Health Institute. Any content provided by our co-host(s) or guests is their opinion and is not intended to reflect the philosophy and policies of J. Flowers Health Institute itself. Nor is it intended to malign any recovery method, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.
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Eve Ruff – Helping Struggling Families With Addiction And Substance Abuse [Episode 79]
Working As A Family Systems Consultant
Welcome, everybody, to the show. I’m so excited that Eve Ruff is here. She’s an absolute dear friend of mine, a colleague that I’ve worked with for many years. Eve is a Senior Consultant with Clere Consulting.
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Hello, Eve. How are you?
I’m well. Thank you.
Even though you flew overnight all night long from Seattle to Houston and landed here about 5:00 in the morning.
I did. I still have a smile on my face.
H ow was your flight?
I don’t know because as soon as I get on that plane, I go to sleep and then the flight attendant wakes me to get off.
You’re like me. That’s exactly what happened.
It’s the reduced air in the plane or wanting to avoid everything that’s around me.
Have you been flying a lot since COVID?
I flew all the way through COVID. My work is such that I go where people need me. There was a great need during COVID so I traveled quite a bit.
I have had so many conversations about COVID, how it affected the human condition, and how it affected lives across the world, mental health, alcoholism, drug addiction, and all of that. How did you see the impact of COVID in your consulting life?
One of the things I saw that was particularly disturbing and hard for me as a woman was the number of women who were accustomed to being in the workforce who were home with children and who found themselves resorting to drinking first later in the day than earlier in the day. Something that had been an innocuous habit flipped a switch and became a problem. That was one thing I saw quite a bit of. Another thing I saw in my work with families is the pressure building up within the family system to such an extent that without other outlets, we saw a lot of damage.
“It was particularly disturbing to see women who were once in the workforce now struggling with alcohol. An innocuous habit kind of flipped a switch and really became a problem for many women.”
When I refer to you when I’m talking to families about you or even the clinicians here at J. Flowers, I often refer to you as a family systems consultant. What is a family systems consultant for our audience to help them understand?
From my frame of mind, what I mean when I call myself that is I am someone whose substance abuse or mental health issues are impacting a family. I go in and really come to understand the dynamics of the family, perhaps multi-generational issues that have transcended the family, and come in with tools and suggestions, not only to help someone in the family who’s struggling with substance abuse but to help the remaining members of the family.
“Where substance abuse or mental health issues are impacting a family, I go in and come to understand their family dynamics to help the whole family, not just the member who’s struggling with substance abuse.”
The way I think about it is if you think about an Alexander Calder mobile if it’s sitting in the museum and it’s very still and it has reached stasis. When you take an identified patient, someone with a substance use disorder, for example, out of the system, everything goes a little catawampus. I come in while all those pieces are shaking and help to regain.
That’s such an amazing story because it’s so true. You’re right. You take that one piece off and the entire system is in flux and not sure what to do.
I really love seeing how things can unstabilize and be prepared. If a loved one is off in treatment for a substance use issue, when they come back into that system, if they have grown and the family hasn’t grown, then we don’t have healing take place.
When the identified patient comes home and steps back into the system to an unwell family, oftentimes, we see higher rates of relapse at that point.
The flip side, conversely, is also true. One thing that I will often tell family members is I can’t promise them that their loved one is going to get well, but I can tell them assuredly that if they do the work, they can see things from a different framework.
Struggles With Substance Use
They can respond differently to their loved one. You have a Master’s degree in library computer science. I do. You were a librarian for 25 years. How in the world did you decide to get into the consulting world in recovery?
It’s an interesting trajectory. I worked for many years as a biomedical research librarian. I worked at a cancer institute in Seattle and at the National Institutes of Health. I came to understand cancer as a chronic, relapsing, and progressive disease, which left unchecked would most likely lead to death. That was the framework that I worked in.
“I worked for many years as a biomedical research librarian and came to understand cancer as a chronic, relapsing, progressive disease which, left unchecked, would most likely lead to death. People have this misconception about librarians shrinking in the backroom. I was a very public librarian.”
People have this misconception about librarians. They think of us in the back room shrinking. I was a very public librarian and I was a linker between biomedical knowledge and researchers and consumers who needed knowledge. I was very out there. Part of my schema for helping my clinicians who needed knowledge was I kept a bar in the library. I would have a drink at the library with every scientist who had downtime in his experiment or a clinician who came in needing an answer to a question.
What everyone saw was that I’d have a drink now and then with someone. What they didn’t know was that I was drinking with everyone. That led me down the path of substance use and an alcoholism problem in my 40s mid-career. I was very fortunate to work for a scientist who said, “Here’s six months. Figure out what you want to do but by all means, get better,” and so I did.
When I came back from a course of treatment and some aftercare and did some work with my own family, we traveled to India for a while. I said, “I can’t go back to what I was doing. I’m really called to work with the disease that I have, which also is chronic, progressive, and relapsing.” It’s so crazy but I never look back and question the decision.
You are one of the nation’s leading family consultants. Every time I talk to you, you’re either on your way to the airport or on your way away from the airport, traveling to some corner of the United States. Oftentimes when I talk to you, you’re headed to New York or you’re in New York. You have an affinity for New York because you’re from New York.
I am a New Yorker through and through. I grew up in Manhattan, the Bronx, and ultimately the suburbs. You can leave New York but a piece of your heart always stays there. I’m happiest in Dumbo, Brooklyn, walking the streets like I did as a child.
Growing Up In New York City
That’s amazing. We were at a small conference in New York with Laura Smith. She hosted a small conference and you and I were there. You said, “Why don’t you stay in Brooklyn at the 1 Hotel?” I was like, “Sure.” We both stayed in Brooklyn and walked part of the streets where you grew up. It was so fun spending time with someone from there who has the passion for New York that you do. What was your childhood like growing up in New York?
It was really different than most childhoods. I grew up in a communist family where we had meetings in our house late into the night. I would hear discourse and arguments, and then I would see grown men make up. I didn’t grow up afraid of very much because of what I was exposed to. My parents thought it was important for us to have jobs as early as possible. I didn’t want to go the way of most of my schoolmates who were candy stripers in hospitals so I got a job working for the Department of Public Works in the back of a trash truck and helping to pick up whatever fell to the sidewalk afterward.
How old were you?
I was fourteen. This is also where I was first exposed to marijuana because all the guys in the back of the truck were smoking marijuana at the end of the day. It wasn’t something that appealed to me at the time but I saw life and I saw the richness of life. I learned to embrace people of all different stripes.
You had quite an artistic father.
I did have an artistic father. My father was an inventor. He smoked marijuana all day every day. When other kids had parents who went off to work, my father slept most of the day. I’d come home from school at 3:00 and he was waking up. He’d be at the kitchen table drinking coffee, smoking a three-pack of Pall Malls, and working on his next invention. He did some pretty cool stuff.
Do you mind if I mention a few?
No, I don’t mind at all.
Not very many people know this about you or your family. This is wild. When you get tinfoil out of the tinfoil box, your father invented the razor that cuts you every time. He has a patent on that. Your father also invented the modern-day coffee cup lid that folds back from the top and you can close it. Your father held the patent on that.
Do you know who Rube Goldberg was?
I don’t.
He was an inventor. They used to make these kids models. You’d roll a marble, the marble would roll the wheel, and the wheel would make the mouse run. That’s how we thought about my father. He had this mind that ran on a different path.
Didn’t he invent the grocery bag with a handle?
The shopping bag with handles for Avon company. He was an embarrassment to us as kids because he was never dressed.
He sat at the kitchen table, smoked pot, and invented things. When you say he was an embarrassment, were you really embarrassed or were you thinking, “My dad’s crazy,” or were you fascinated by his mind?
I didn’t come to really appreciate his mind until I went off to college. He started this letter-writing campaign with me because phone bills were expensive and it still was long distance rates. My father started writing letters to me. They were the first love letters that I ever received. He talked about the day I was born hanging from a fire escape in New York City shouting like a gorilla because he was so happy. His letters to me divulged his mind. What my mother used to say is that we were so alike, my father and I, that we couldn’t get along when we were young. Since he outlived my mom for so many years, we became closer as time went on.
Eve’s Jewish Heritage
You have your father’s artistic brain. I could tell so many stories about your brain but we’re not going to go there. That’s so amazing. What an amazing family you grew up in. In fact, you grew up Jewish. You are Jewish. It was during Passover that you had your very first drink of alcohol.
It was. I was eight years old. During the Passover service, you set a place at the table for someone who has nowhere else to go and you provide a glass of wine for this prophet. My grandfather used to drink that glass of wine and the kids would think, “The prophet came to our house.” When I was eight years old, my grandfather let me in on his little secret that he was the one who drank the wine. He said, “Why don’t you drink it this time?”
You were eight.
I thought, “That’s disgusting,” but I drank it. Something washed over me. I’m 68 years old and I remember this experience like it was yesterday. It was a salve. Everything about the world dripped off of me. Mind you, I did not become an alcoholic until my 40s but the disease was progressing within me from eight years on.
I knew that story and I thought it was an amazing story that you tell that eventually, you were an alcoholic. You talked about your boss, the scientist, who said, “Eve, it’s time to get some help. Here’s six months.” What an amazing gift.
It was an incredible gift. His name was Robert Day and he was the director of the center. Interestingly, the story comes full circle. He gave me this amazing gift. Many years later when I was working in the treatment industry, he had an adopted daughter who was struggling with alcoholism. He called me to help find placement for her. Usually, you’re paying it forward. In this case, I had the opportunity to give it right back to them. I placed her in treatment. We’re still in touch. Even though Dr. Day is no longer with us, I’m still in touch with his daughter.
Staying Healthy
That’s amazing. I love that story. What do you do in your life? You work with a lot of stress. You work with families who are really torn apart and families who are going through things that are unimaginable with addiction. How do you keep yourself healthy?
Do you know what came to mind first? The very first thing I thought of and I can’t recommend it for everyone is I have a six-year-old grandson. When I need stress reduction, all I have to do is say, “Can we play Legos?”
That’s perfect.
That’s a little bit tongue-in-cheek. I have a really rigorous Al-Anon program. I was a latecomer to Al-Anon but I had someone who said to me that if I wanted to do this work, I had to understand where I ended and where my families began. I have a Peloton. I have an incredible cadre of friends who don’t work in the industry who are supportive and don’t want to hear stories. Unless they’re good stories, then they want to hear them.
That allows you to get away and be normal, be out of your field, be yourself, and talk about other things than recovery.
The Teflon Raincoat
It is because of my own personal journey of recovery that I use a lot of the tools that I learned in treatment, meditation on a regular basis, exercise on a regular basis, and good nutrition to the best of my ability given that I travel so much. I work to have that peripatetic balance in my life. I was going to tell you this great story. I worked for a woman early on in my first internship and she gave me this visual. It was a 24-bed women’s treatment center and I was an inpatient counselor intern. She said to me, “When you walk in this building, the first thing you do is put on a Teflon raincoat. It’s semi-permeable so what needs to come in will come in, but everything else has got to be allowed to drip right off you. Otherwise, you will not be able to do this work.”
“Because of my journey of recovery, using a lot of the tools from treatment – regular meditation, regular exercise, good nutrition – I just really work to have that peripatetic balance in my life.”
That’s exactly right. I have a similar story. One of my graduate professors often talked about the professional hat and leaving the office, going home on a Friday afternoon or an evening, and being able to take that hat off. He said, “The advice that I want to give you going into this field is every day when you leave your office, whether you’re wearing a hat or not, put your hand on your head and take the hat off, place it on your desk, pat it, and tell it you’ll see it tomorrow.” I’ve done that for 32 years.
I love that.
NYC To Seattle
It helps. I love the story of the Teflon. Tell everybody how in the world did you get from New York to Seattle. That’s a big difference.
In a blue Ford van with a backpack and a boyfriend.
In 1978.
You all know how old I am. I married that boyfriend. He’s the father of one of my children. He’s still a dear friend. We came to climb Mount Rainier. I had this vision of climbing 14,410 feet of that mountain. We were living in Philadelphia and in New York and we trained on city streets and city buildings. We climbed the World Trade Center Tower with 40-pound backpacks on so that we could train to climb Mount Rainier.
That’s amazing.
After going to Mount Rainier, we went to this beautiful restaurant on the banks of Puget Sound. I called my mother and said, “Mom, I am not coming back East. I am staying here in Seattle. It’s too beautiful to leave.” There was no one in Seattle. Boeing was in trouble. We didn’t lock our cars. I didn’t have a key to my house when I first bought my house. It’s a very different place now but it was Shangri-La..
What’d your mom say when you said, “I’m not coming home.”
My mother said, “Do they have doctors in Seattle?” She was so worried.
I bet she was.
Doctors, bagels, and that kind of stuff.
What an amazing life you’ve lived. Going back to Mount Rainier, one of the things I love is that when you travel and when you’re flying home, you always take a picture of Mount Rainier and post it on your social media account. It shows your love for that. Every time you fly over it, you must have a little bit of memory of the day that you climbed it for the first time.
I have memories of that day. I was really fortunate about several years ago, 5 or 7 years into my career. I did a fundraiser for this women’s treatment center. We called it One Step at a Time. I told a group of women that if they were able to amass a solid twelve months of sobriety, they could train with me to climb Mount Rainier.
We called it One Step at a Time. It was an amazing experience. We did not summit but there was more instruction in the fact that we were unable to summit. There were parallels in climbing that mountain, preparing, doing the work, taking it one step at a time, and having to be able to get down the mountain, not just up the mountain. The parallels were so many. This small group of women, about thirteen of them, some guides, and me, are still all in close touch. That mountain often is my higher power.
Advice To Struggling Families
I see that. What advice do you give families looking for help for their loved one? What advice do you give families during their tumultuous times of, “I don’t know what to do?” What are the steps they take?
The very first thing I tell them is that if they can’t trust the process and they don’t have hope, let me carry the hope for them while they are waiting. That’s step number one. I encourage them to do all the kinds of things that I do to stay well because if they are not well, then they can’t be there for their family members. I’m a big reader and I’m a big proponent of doing somatic work. I get families not only the coaching that I can offer, but I also get therapeutic support from a somatic standpoint and I tell them to let go of control.
I’m so happy that I had this time to be able to introduce you. Everyone in the United States in this industry knows Eve Ruff, but for the families out there that don’t know Eve Ruff, what an amazing introduction to really allow people to understand who you are as an individual and how you work with families as a consultant. Thank you for taking time.
Thank you so much for this opportunity.
If you’re open to it, I’d love for you to tell people how they can reach you.
I am.
You’re so busy, but how do people reach you?
I’m not so busy. The truth about me is I have really good boundaries but I also answer my phone 24/7 because I know that when somebody is struggling, the immediacy of a response is important. I can go from a dead sleep to having a coaching conversation in no time. The very best way to reach me is through my cell phone. I’m glad to give that number. It’s area code (206) 276-4472.
If you have any questions for J. Flowers, look at our website, JFlowersHealth.com, or you’re welcome to call us at (713) 783-6655. I love you to death and I adore working with you. You have helped so many families that I have worked with and continue to work with. I look forward to collaborating with you and your team for many years.
Thanks. Working with Clere Consulting team members is a great privilege.
I love the entire team. Thank you for doing this.
